All Blacks legend Kieran Read opened Max Deegan's eyes - by advising him to practice blindfold to get better!
Read sprinkled stardust around Leinster training yesterday as the boys in blue queued up to get some insights from the New Zealand great.
It was no ordinary Monday at the province's UCD base as the World Cup winning captain paid a visit.
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Reid, 36, is friends with Stuart Lancaster and has other ties to the Blues - he has links with fellow Kiwis Andrew Goodman and Michael Ala'alatoa, Leinster's new forwards coach and gnarly prop respectively, and played alongside summer recruit Jason Jenkins for Toyota Verblitz in Japan.
The New Zealand legend is on a fact-finding tour of European rugby and pitched up at Leinster's URC victory over Munster at the Aviva Stadium last Saturday.
He met up with Ala'alatoa, Goodman and Jenkins for lunch on Sunday, had a bite to eat with Blues head coach Leo Cullen that night before spending all of Monday at Leinster training.
"The lads were picking him up individually, but he talked at the team meeting at lunchtime and was great," said Cullen.
"He's been great, just in terms of mindset. He's one of the iconic figures of the game, really.
"He was very good in terms of his sharing of his different experiences - particularly because we've got a young group this week, it was great to have him in."
Many of Leinster's frontliners - some of whom, including Johnny Sexton, were on Ireland teams that finally beat Read's All Blacks - missed the visit as they are now on Test duty for the upcoming Autumn series.
Deegan, who skippered Emerging Ireland recently in South Africa and will play against a New Zealand XV at the RDS on Friday week, was among those who lapped up what Read had to impart.
As a back row himself, Deegan was eager to question the former Crusaders' icon very word.
"Yeah, course I did," he said. "I was asking him about being a world class no 8 and how did he get to that point.
"I'd call him the best no 8 in the world for almost 10 years.
"So I asked him what kind of small things he did outside of training, the extras that he would have done.
"I thought he was unbelievably skillful. He could do things that other no 8s couldn’t, and I was just asking him about how he fine-tuned his game and went from that level a lot of other people were at, to being world class."
And what really stood out for Deegan was what Read had to say about his work around the base of the scrum - how he worked a lot to control the ball at scrum-time.
" He would have done little bits blindfolded," revealed Deegan.
"In the scrum you can’t always necessarily see everything, so he’d be able to feel where the ball is, to get in the right positions for the scrum-half."
Since he was a kid, Deegan studied the likes of Read, Pierre Spies and Taulupe Faletau - physical but extremely skilful no 8s.
"That’s kind of something I would look at in my game," Deegan said.
"The ability to catch-pass at the line, make good decisions and be a smarter rugby player than the opposition.
"I might not be as physical as some number eights, say over in South Africa, but it's being a smarter one. Being able to work smarter, pick my moments, things like that."
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